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Plymouth State
Ipdate
PLYMOUTH STATE COLLEGE • PLYMOUTH, N.H. • A PUBLICATION OF THE OFFICE OF NEWS SERVICES • WINTER 1994 • VOLUME LX, NUMBER 1
PSC professor carving a niche in sports history
John B. Allen tracks skiing's past
America's foremost ski historian didn't see it
coming. In February 1976, Plymouth State College
Professor E. John B. Allen was plodding through the
writing of a manuscript on Renaissance diplomacy
when he took a break and detoured to a small exhibit
of old skiing prints in Innsbmck. To a self-professed
"aging ski bum," the experience was the research
equivalent of crashing into your first mogul.
"On the instant," Allen wrote in the preface to his
latest book {From Skisport to Skiing: One Hundred
Years of an American Sport, 1840-1940, The University of Massachusetts Press), "I decided to become a
collector." What began with the purchase of an old
postcard or two and some ski manuals from the 1930s
turned into a new career and an overwhelming
passion.
"I've still got the four chapters on l6th century
diplomacy shoved away in my drawer," Allen said
during a recent interview. "I can remember a time in
Munich. It's raining like hell, and I'm mnning from
veranda to veranda into an open doorway leading to
an indoor flea market. I stumble into this place with
stacks of old ski magazines and assorted memorabilia,
and I'm thinking, 'Are you a collector? Have you just
turned a corner in your life?' I bought two pictures
and then, literally within a couple of weeks, I heard
that the town of Franconia was starting a ski museum."
Allen eventually was appointed director of the
oral history archives for the New England Ski Museum and shifted course from Renaissance diplomacy
to a new academic pursuit — ski history. It was all
downhill from there.
"One of the things that interested me was that
nobody else was doing it," Allen said. "Sport as an
academic study is a relatively recent phenomc
America, the study of sports history basically i
the study of baseball. I was amazed at how everybody avoided winter sports."
Part of the reason is that, while skiing is important
to the heritage of New Hampshire and other northern
states, it is not significant to the everyday lives of the
vast majority of Americans. In places where it is
thought of as a national sport, skiing is accepted as a
subject worthy of serious academic study.
"It's a national catastrophe if the Austrians don't
win the downhill," Allen said. "It is a crisis of epic
proportions. When the Austrians don't win the gold,
it becomes a matter for the goverment."
While skiing's influence on the popular culture of
northern New England is considerable, the ski itself is
a relative newcomer to the region. The earliest documented use of skis in the Northeast, as reported in
Allen's book, is recorded in 1870, when the children
of Swedish immigrants used "skidor, Swedish snow-
shoes" to travel to school. Skis became the trademark
of another Mainer, forest warden Frederick Jorgensen,
who used them to track down snowshoed poachers.
Allen's latest book traces the history of skiing from
Ski History
Continued on page 2
Biederman's, Volpe's rebuilding after November blaze
Two Main Street landmarks were gutted by fire
shortly after midnight on November 4, 1993. Coffee-
seeking locals, still nabbing the sleep from their eyes,
shuffled downtown for the morning papers and a
bagel only to discover that Volpe's Market and
Biederman's Deli, along with the law offices of
Hopkins & Blaine and an upstairs barber shop, were
suddenly out of business.
"It's very similar to a death in the family," said
Patti Biedennan (PSC 76). "You go through the same
emotions — shock, denial, anger, mourning — all of
the stages. That's the end of that Biederman's Deli. It
will never be quite the same."
All of the businesses have pledged to rebuild and
'are working together to reopen as soon as possible.
As members of a condo association, Volpe's and
Biederman's are entangled in a web of complicated
insurance issues that, once resolved, will enable them
to move ahead with the work necessary to reopen.
"I think that Scott (PSC 75) and I were able to get
over it and move forward pretty quickly. We're excited
about the new Biederman's. I think alumni who return
next Homecoming might be shocked. When we
remodeled the Cellar Pub into Biederman's there was
this huge outcry. People couldn't believe that the
picnic tables where they'd carved their names as
college students were gone. We're preparing for some
of that again. But the new building will incorporate a
lot of the old Biederman's. The floor plan will be more
efficient and will give us more space. There may be a
Biederman's
Continued on page 5

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OCR Note

The text presented here is in raw, un-copyedited form, as created by optical character recognition (OCR) software. It is not always complete or accurate and should be used for preliminary research only.

Plymouth State
Ipdate
PLYMOUTH STATE COLLEGE • PLYMOUTH, N.H. • A PUBLICATION OF THE OFFICE OF NEWS SERVICES • WINTER 1994 • VOLUME LX, NUMBER 1
PSC professor carving a niche in sports history
John B. Allen tracks skiing's past
America's foremost ski historian didn't see it
coming. In February 1976, Plymouth State College
Professor E. John B. Allen was plodding through the
writing of a manuscript on Renaissance diplomacy
when he took a break and detoured to a small exhibit
of old skiing prints in Innsbmck. To a self-professed
"aging ski bum," the experience was the research
equivalent of crashing into your first mogul.
"On the instant," Allen wrote in the preface to his
latest book {From Skisport to Skiing: One Hundred
Years of an American Sport, 1840-1940, The University of Massachusetts Press), "I decided to become a
collector." What began with the purchase of an old
postcard or two and some ski manuals from the 1930s
turned into a new career and an overwhelming
passion.
"I've still got the four chapters on l6th century
diplomacy shoved away in my drawer," Allen said
during a recent interview. "I can remember a time in
Munich. It's raining like hell, and I'm mnning from
veranda to veranda into an open doorway leading to
an indoor flea market. I stumble into this place with
stacks of old ski magazines and assorted memorabilia,
and I'm thinking, 'Are you a collector? Have you just
turned a corner in your life?' I bought two pictures
and then, literally within a couple of weeks, I heard
that the town of Franconia was starting a ski museum."
Allen eventually was appointed director of the
oral history archives for the New England Ski Museum and shifted course from Renaissance diplomacy
to a new academic pursuit — ski history. It was all
downhill from there.
"One of the things that interested me was that
nobody else was doing it," Allen said. "Sport as an
academic study is a relatively recent phenomc
America, the study of sports history basically i
the study of baseball. I was amazed at how everybody avoided winter sports."
Part of the reason is that, while skiing is important
to the heritage of New Hampshire and other northern
states, it is not significant to the everyday lives of the
vast majority of Americans. In places where it is
thought of as a national sport, skiing is accepted as a
subject worthy of serious academic study.
"It's a national catastrophe if the Austrians don't
win the downhill," Allen said. "It is a crisis of epic
proportions. When the Austrians don't win the gold,
it becomes a matter for the goverment."
While skiing's influence on the popular culture of
northern New England is considerable, the ski itself is
a relative newcomer to the region. The earliest documented use of skis in the Northeast, as reported in
Allen's book, is recorded in 1870, when the children
of Swedish immigrants used "skidor, Swedish snow-
shoes" to travel to school. Skis became the trademark
of another Mainer, forest warden Frederick Jorgensen,
who used them to track down snowshoed poachers.
Allen's latest book traces the history of skiing from
Ski History
Continued on page 2
Biederman's, Volpe's rebuilding after November blaze
Two Main Street landmarks were gutted by fire
shortly after midnight on November 4, 1993. Coffee-
seeking locals, still nabbing the sleep from their eyes,
shuffled downtown for the morning papers and a
bagel only to discover that Volpe's Market and
Biederman's Deli, along with the law offices of
Hopkins & Blaine and an upstairs barber shop, were
suddenly out of business.
"It's very similar to a death in the family," said
Patti Biedennan (PSC 76). "You go through the same
emotions — shock, denial, anger, mourning — all of
the stages. That's the end of that Biederman's Deli. It
will never be quite the same."
All of the businesses have pledged to rebuild and
'are working together to reopen as soon as possible.
As members of a condo association, Volpe's and
Biederman's are entangled in a web of complicated
insurance issues that, once resolved, will enable them
to move ahead with the work necessary to reopen.
"I think that Scott (PSC 75) and I were able to get
over it and move forward pretty quickly. We're excited
about the new Biederman's. I think alumni who return
next Homecoming might be shocked. When we
remodeled the Cellar Pub into Biederman's there was
this huge outcry. People couldn't believe that the
picnic tables where they'd carved their names as
college students were gone. We're preparing for some
of that again. But the new building will incorporate a
lot of the old Biederman's. The floor plan will be more
efficient and will give us more space. There may be a
Biederman's
Continued on page 5

OCR Note

The text presented here is in raw, un-copyedited form, as created by optical character recognition (OCR) software. It is not always complete or accurate and should be used for preliminary research only.